Mercedes-AMG One Battles Aston Martin Valkyrie for F1 Road Car Supremacy

To say the Mercedes-AMG One is an F1 car for the road is not hyperbole, but can it top the Valkyrie?

You hear it said about sports cars all the time. “This is a racecar for the road.” And usually that is nonsense. Especially if you are talking about F1 cars. F1 cars are built to incredible precision in labs that look more like hospital operating rooms than automotive production lines. Building a single F1 car costs in the neighborhood of $15 million. And these are extremely focused racing machines that can’t even be started on their own. How can any road car even come close? Well, in the case of the Mercedes-AMG One you start by putting the engine from Lewis Hamilton’s 2016 Mercedes F1 W07 Hybrid in it. That tiny 1.6L V6 hybrid is good for more than 1,000 horsepower. There is also the pushrod suspension, advanced active aero and a lot more. It is a legit F1 car for the road.

But the Aston Martin Valkyrie was the brainchild of Adrian Newey, who is possibly the greatest F1 car designer that ever lived. The Valkyrie is more powerful, lighter and even more extreme than the Mercedes-AMG One. So, which is truly the better racecar for the road? That is what the folks at Top Gear wanted to find out. So, they brought one of each to Thruxton Circuit to test in ten different categories so they could name a winner. By the way, if you ever thought about becoming an automotive journalist, watching this video on the Top Gear YouTube channel of Ollie Marriage and Jethro Bovingdon play with these multi-million-dollar hypercars for a day just might convince you.

The First Tests

The first few tests include a sound test, a drift challenge and some party tricks. Mercedes-AMG One sounds like an F1 car from 2016. However, it can’t compete with the 6.5L V12 in the Valkyrie and the Aston Martin wins the sound test. But the AMG wins the drift challenge and the party trick. Nothing beats watching the AMG drop into maximum attack mode and seeing all the active aero deploy.

Super cool.

Valkyrie Goes on a Run

The Valkyrie wins the next five challenges in a row. In a rolling drag race, the combination of light weight and more power is just too much for the AMG. The Valkyrie also stops from speed quicker, is easier to get started and has the better powertrain. In the handling category the Valkyrie and AMG tie.

The last challenge category is how similar the cars are to actual F1 cars and here the AMG picks up another win. It uses a freaking F1 engine after all. So, the final score is 6.5 points for the Aston and 3.5 points for the Merc.

Beyond the Numbers

Marriage and Bovingdon agree that even though the Aston had the higher score, you can’t really rank hypercars this way. It is really about which car do you fall in love with more.

Even though they both end up selecting the Aston, it is much closer than either of them thought it would be at the outset of the comparison. The Mercedes-AMG One may have finished second to the Aston Martin Valkyrie, but it is far from being a loser.

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Joe Kucinski

Joe has been obsessed with cars since he got his very first Matchbox toy in the ‘70s. In 2003, he found a new obsession in track days that led to obtaining his SCCA competition license in 2015. In 2019, he became a certified driving instructor for the National Auto Sport Association. His love for all things four wheels has never wavered, whether it's driving some of the best cars in the world on the racetrack, tackling 2,000-mile road trips in 2-seat sports cars or being winched off the side of a mountaintop in a Jeep. Writing for the suite of Internet Brands Auto Communities sites, including Rennlist.com, Ford Truck Enthusiasts, 6 Speed and more allows him to share that knowledge and passion with others.